The nicest thing I can say about Boston City Hall is that it could have been worse, maybe. The Boston City Archives has already shared a few of the other 1960s architectural abominations proposed for the Government Center site. They’re all proposals that only an architecture school dean’s mother could love. But long before that mess was inflicted upon Boston, city architect Edmund M. Wheelwright (let me Wiki that for ya) drafted a serious proposal for then mayor Nathan Matthews. While it would not have been the hulking shitcastle we have today, it would have been remarkably unremarkable.

The year was 1891, and Old City Hall was apparently bursting at the seams. Mayor Nate asked Architect Ed to evaluate two main options: (1) attach a nearby building to the old city hall or (2) find a different site for a new city hall.

Option 1: Stay. Architect Ed did some thinking and number crunching and came back to the mayor in 1892 and said: “Now, if you really want to stay in this here roach motel, then I can embiggen the old court house building and repurpose it for the city’s departments. I’d enlarge it out over the sidewalk and connect it to city hall with a bridge. It would cost $1.4 million and we’d be absolutely maxing out available square feet, so the building would probably be obsolete and too small again before it even opens. When should we get started?”

Just as Mayor Nate was about to blow a gasket and kick Ed out of his office, the sly city architect let out, “well—if you absolutely insist—I could instead build a brand-spanking-new city hall for just a bit more money and it would be awesome, the best city hall in the country, that I can tell you. In fact, I coincidentally have plans for that right here.”

Option 2: Move. Ed floated two Beacon Street locations as possible candidates for the new city hall: a squarish plot immediately adjacent to the Bulfinch State House, or a longer rectangular lot facing the Public Garden. As it turned out, people wanted to confine all their government overlords into one easily avoidable location, and so the squarish plot near the State House was preferred.

Although Wheelwright was an accomplished architect who has given the greater Boston area interesting structures like the decorative Horticulture Hall (Wiki) and the odd but endearing Harvard Lampoon castle (Wiki), his proposed design for city hall was as bland as a boiled rice cake. Sure it had columns and balustrades, and fancy windows, but boy did it look like a yawn fest. Lacking any charm, character, or distinctiveness, it would have been a somber palace of bureaucracy. Would it have been better than the current city hall? Well, sure, but so would a refrigerator box soaked in Scotchgard.

Mayor Nate Matthews (whose favorite meal, I’m told, was lima beans and Nilla Wafers with a glass of room temperature water), liked the design. The city council liked it too, and reportedly so did several journals of the day. But alas, the grand plans were stymied by the Massachusetts higher ups. In order to build their boxy municipal accommodations, the city needed permission from the state legislature to appropriate lands in excess of an acre. The state Senate gave their consent, but the House did not and the plans for a city hall upon a hill were put on the back burner. Wheelwright’s grand plans survive today in a giant book that no one ever checks out, in blog posts that no one ever reads, and probably a bunch of other places.